A number of ways to hold fishing rods have been developed over the years primarily to indicate when a fish had been caught or to set the hook as in Derie, U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,115 or in Barfield, U.S. Pat. No. 3,411,739. In Derie, the handle of the fishing rod is placed into a hole in a bottom board and then the outer portion of the rod is bent downwardly over an intermediate support and gripped by the hooked end of a front support pivotally connected at the front of the board. When a fish is caught, the end that has been hooked will be released and because the rod was bent downwardly and pulled against the fixed restriction, the released end of the rod will snap upwardly and set the hook in the fish's mouth. In Barfield, a V-shaped notch and support legs are formed out of a wire member. The fishing rod handle is then rested directly on the ground, but the tip end itself is held off the ground in the V-shaped notch.
Other forms of fishing rod holders are shown in Harris, U.S. Pat. No. 2,606,731; Knight, U.S. Pat. No. 3,159,366; and Gates, U.S. Pat. No. 3,327,978. Harris designed a holder for a rod and reel to keep them on board a boat. The holder includes a U-shaped portion, to receive the reel, that is mounted on one end of a bar. The front end of the bar is bent upwardly and is provided with a V-shaped notch for supporting the pole. Included at an intermediate position between the reel holder and the bent front end portion which includes the V-shaped notch is an adjustable mechanism for locking the pole in the device and a C-clamp is used to connect the holder to the boat. By mounting the reel in its holder and the rod in the V-notch, the rod can then be locked in place thereby preventing it from being accidentally dropped overboard. Knight discloses a holder that can be used on land, on a boat or from a pier and is designed to reproduce the effect of using a tubular shaped receptacle, as one would find in a fighting chair, and to receive just the handle end of the rod. That rod receptacle can be folded into a flattened position or unfolded into an upright, ready position and is hingable mounted to one end of a board to be able to pivot backward and forward during operation after a fish has been hooked. The user sits on at least a portion of the board to which the rod holder is pivotally attached with the end of the rod in the tubular receptacles.
Gates discloses a fishing rod support that can be pivotally secured to the top of a tackle box. The object of the support is to hold the rod, but also to assure that it will not be displaced. The holder is comprised of a series of wire or rod sections pivotally attached to each other and pivotally attached to either a base or the top of a tackle box and angled away from each other when in its raised, ready to use position. The device also includes a bail that will fit over the reel end of the fishing rod with an upper portion of the rod itself resting on a cross member formed in one of the angled sets of rods.
I am also aware of a collapsible gun rest as in Pribis, U.S. Pat. No. 2,774,563. The gun rest is comprised of a box structure that can be opened to define two upwardly open box halves, each of which is provided with a movable support member having a V-shaped notch at what will be an outer end. Each support member is pivotally mounted in its own box half, with the pivot connection being provided by a pin that extends through the box side walls and through an elongated slot within the support member. Accordingly, each notch member normally lies flat within its box portion and can be raised vertically with respect to the pivot pin. When pivoted into its use position, each member will be raised within the limits of the elongated slot during pivoting and then lowered into a receiving notch formed in the interior of the box. The box halves are connected together by means of a piano hinge and the two notched support members can be of different lengths.